


Not Great, Admittedly

by ishie



Category: Veep (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 02:26:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12181089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: There's this thing that Amy does every couple of weeks, whether she wants to or not, where she sits and thinks, "I could have made something of myself."





	Not Great, Admittedly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dafna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dafna/gifts).



> Amy goes totally AU near the beginning of season 4 and never looks back.
> 
> Thanks to EA for the beta!

There's this thing that Amy does every couple of weeks, whether she wants to or not, where she sits totally motionless and stares at a wall or a shrub or — more times than she'd care to count — the side of Mike's doughy head, and she thinks:

_I could have made something of myself._

Arguably, she has. She loves to argue, so that's all right. 

But as she sits here outside Selina's office, the _Oval_ Office, waiting for a break in the parade of dumbfuckery so she can dump the latest canvassing stats before scurrying back to the rathole she now calls her office in Maryland, Amy realizes she hasn't moved in almost five minutes while the thought ricochets around inside her apparently cavernously empty head:

 _I could have_ made _something of myself._

Which is fucking ridiculous, obviously. 

Amy was the first woman to serve as chief of staff to the vice president. Not just any vice president but the first female vice president. One that she helped to elect! After clawing her way upward over almost ten years on the woman's staff! Her name's on a scholarship for women at Penn, modest though it is, and both Hillary Clinton and Cecile Richards send her a holiday card every year. One year she even got a little rolly-eyed smile from Clinton at the Correspondent's Dinner after Amy mocked some limp dick senator to his face. Did anyone else in the history of anything ever get a rolly-eyed smile from Hillary Fucking Clinton over a martini?

Well, probably, but on top of all of that, and a million other things besides, Amy Brookheimer is now the youngest-ever campaign manager for a sitting president.

(Okay, she might be the youngest-ever. Stephanopoulos was only a comms director, and that burnout who ran— It's not really worth it to check. The last time Amy got the notion, she found her own Wikipedia page and only narrowly managed to stop herself from creating an account to edit out all the dick jokes. Fucking House interns with way too much fucking time on their hands.)

A door slams somewhere nearby, then a bellow of rage trumpets through the thick plaster walls.

"Gary!"

Sue pivots from her keyboard to face Amy, who sighs and stands, belting her coat with one hand.

There are at least two dozen things Selina needs to make decisions on, none of which are even new since the last time Amy had five minutes of her own candidate's time. She's distilled as much of it as she can into simple yes-or-no bullets. There's no such thing as nuance in this West Wing, after all. There's only whatever she can rattle through in the scraps of time she manages to worm into during Selina's day. 

Waiting has already eaten up literally half the day and Amy's no closer to getting inside the Oval than when she arrived. On top of which, she's so tired she would rather douche with broken glass than spend one more second sitting here like a neglected stepchild.

The folder she was carrying makes a sad, unsatisfying little _thwip_ when it hits Sue's desk.

"Get those in front of her before the—"

"Obviously," Sue says, her voice as crisp as a Marine's crease. She's facing the keyboard again, the folder safely stashed out of sight, before she finishes the word.

Amy tries anyway. She cocks her hip and tilts her head, trying out a smile she hopes doesn't look as much like a grimace as it feels. "Listen, have you, you know, heard anything about maybe Karen—"

But Sue is now on the phone, which Amy didn't even hear ring.

"Nice to see you, too," she mutters on her way out.

"You need to get out more!" Sue calls after her, the familiar refrain jabbing into the back of Amy's head.

Amy gets out plenty. She's out right now, isn't she? She hasn't even checked her phone in the last ten minutes, which is practically enough to qualify her as taking the whole day off. And just the other night she met up with Randy and Carla for a quick drink between ...

Shit, when was that? May? _February_?

Amy elbows her way past two freshly scrubbed young women, who see the V on her badge and turn aside to whisper behind cupped hands. She definitely does not hear the name Karen Collins, and even if she did, it would not be a big deal. Amy is a professional, at the top of her game, and all the inconveniences and apparent slights are nothing more than growing pains.

She is the youngest ever campaign manager for a presidential re-election campaign, and she is on top of the world.

Near the comms bullpen, Amy catches a glimpse of herself in a pane of glass: a cappuccino stain down the front of her coat, four-inch roots, and a face like a bowl of spoiled milk. _Christ._ Pulling a pair of sunglasses out of her bag and jamming them on her face, she throws her shoulders back so far something pulls in her chest, and sails out through the south entrance.

There is one good thing about being relegated to Baltimore: the interminable drive back out of the beltway will give her plenty of time for screaming. 

* * * * *

The first time Amy got involved in a presidential campaign, she was a volunteer. Awkward conversations door-to-door, sticking leaflets under windshield wipers, phonebanking for hours: she happily jumped in wherever she was needed, or gave a good facsimile of being happy to chip in, at least. It worked well enough that she scored a spot at the nominating convention. She went with her thesis advisor, who was also her sometime boyfriend, as delegates for Governor Maitland. She'd left with a fellowship in Selina's office after spending most of the week floating on the heady atmosphere of bullshit and the fumes of her own self-importance. 

And Dan, she shudders to remember. He was a junior legislative aide to a freshman representative from ... Wyoming? No, that first one was from Montana, wasn't she? 

Amy counts back, trying to ignore Richard's babbling as he rockets them through the tunnels on a golf cart.

Montana, that's not right. If she was still working on her thesis, then Dan would have been a summer intern for Maitland's ... publicist? Amy barely manages to swallow her groan. So much of her career has run right alongside his. When he's up, she's down, or the other way around, but whenever they meet in the middle—

Nope. That is a road best left untraveled for now, and never mind how often she's already traveled it.

The cart jerks to a stop at the end of a hallway. Richard carefully steps out, holding his arms awkwardly enough that even Amy notices.

"Why are you walking like that?"

"I was trying to keep you from seeing inside this room over here," Richard says. He keeps up his ridiculous posture, which makes his coat swing from his arms like he's trying out for _Dracula_.

Amy could wait for him to realize what he just admitted to her, or she could swerve around him as his face begins to crumple and push open the door instead.

"Hi there," trills Karen Collins. "Can I help you find something? Just," and, oh, here comes that weaselly fauxpologetic look, "it's only supposed to be the president's staff down here."

Amy breathes through the spike of fury that bubbles up into her brain, shoots a tight smile, and closes the door again.

Karen Goddamn Collins. Who pretends not to know who Amy is at literally every turn. Something, by the way, that she's been doing since the first time they met after Amy transitioned into a real salaried job on the senator's staff.

Richard's usual sunny blankness dawns out of his vaguely constipated panic. "Oh, was she not in there? Phew."

Amy grins at him, so widely that she feels it throbbing in the back of her head. Richard takes a full step back.

"Why isn't she with the president?" Her words don't normally feel this much like gouts of flame sweeping up from her guts, but it's a special day.

"She, uh, she's waiting down here to speak with the vice president."

"Is she?"

Richard swallows so hard his glasses slide down his nose. He pushes them back up and squeaks, "Yes?"

"About what?"

"I believe it's, ah, something to do with the speech tonight. Mr. Ericsson asked her to— Wait, isn't that why you're here?"

For a minute, Amy can't hear anything but the teakettle screech that fills her ears. Of course Karen and Bill are working on a speech with the vice president. Why wouldn't they? Amy has lived and breathed this speech – and every other aspect of the campaign for _months_ – but why would she get looped in on something like a nincompoop and a grandstander getting their hands on it? Why would the campaign manager need to know that the circle of people working on the fucking soft launch of the vice president's convention speech just expanded _again_?

She takes a deep breath. It does nothing but make her feel dizzy, so she tries again. "You know what, fuck this."

Richard nods in agreement before asking, "This what?"

"All of this!" Amy smacks her hand on the cinderblock wall but hardly feels the sting. "Every single last bit of it. Fuck it all."

She rips her phone out of her pocket and squeezes out an email. Before she can lose her courage, she types out another, pressing the keys so hard her thumbs are bone white.

"There," she declares. Her voice bounces off the walls. A nice ringing note of finality to the bumblefuck clown show her life has become. "I quit."

"Over email?"

Her stomach is already twisting with dread and panic, but she puts her chin up and says firmly, "Yes."

"Oh," Richard says. "That's very decisive."

He beams at her the way her mother never would. As if she hasn't just thrown her whole life in the toilet here in— Where are they? Kentucky, maybe? Missouri? How is she going to get home? 

Jesus, what has she _done_? 

She dials both of Sue's phones. Voicemail before the second ring, which means she's definitely being screened. 

_Shit._

"So what are you going to do now?" Richard asks. "Ooh, are you going to consult with Mr. Egan? I knew it wouldn't be long until he poached you away from the White House. You two make an incredible team. Just the other day I told Mr. Ryan that—."

Amy tunes him out, because her phone is buzzing with a new email notification. She opens it before she can think twice.

For once, she's not disappointed.

> **From:** Tom James
> 
> **To:** Amy Brookheimer
> 
> **Subject:** RE: Your next step?
> 
> I'm intrigued. Come up to Bangor. Here til Thurs. Call Sharon for directions.

She yanks the badge from around her neck and hands it to Richard, along with the tote bag holding her laptop and briefing books. "I'll call IT tonight to wipe my phone. Get an intern to pack up my stuff and send it to my house, would you?"

At the end of the hall, as she waits for the elevator to whisk her back up to whatever street level is here, she stares at the floor and thinks:

_I'm gonna make something of myself._

* * * * *

Six months later, Amy watches Selina pretend to lose gracefully to O'Brien from her office in Bangor. When CNN finally throws to the concession speech – complete with Dan's best attempt at sounding grave and sympathetic – she has this totally insane urge to grab her keys and rush down to her car. It's a ten hour drive, and the airport's closed by now, but in the end what really stops her is a shot of Karen Collins onstage with Selina.

"I somehow thought she'd pull this off," Tom says from the couch on the other side of the room. He tosses a balled-up napkin on the table and leans back.

"I didn't."

She shoves another slice of pizza in her mouth and stares at her screen. They still need to come up with a killer quote for this opioid epidemic initiative so she can leak it tomorrow. If they're going to get any leverage for Tom to build on for reelection, they need to lock down an easy bipartisan push now. O'Brien and Montez are going to make military funding and entitlement cuts their top priorities for the first hundred days. The only way to get him shoehorned into their agenda is to cue up some sad orphans, but Amy's capacity for tugging on heartstrings dried up about four elections ago.

Tom blows out a big raspberry and unwinds from the couch. "Pack it in, Amy. We'll hit it tomorrow. Nobody's going to talk about anything but O'Brien squeaking out a win in Virginia anyway."

They both know she's not going to do anything of the kind, but they wander through the pleasantries of good-nights. Amy even manages to get in a few don't-forget-about-your-meet-cute-photo-op-tomorrow and only-729-days-left before he waves her off.

By the time the outer door closes behind him, Amy's already got her mug half-filled with the scotch she keeps in her bottom drawer. She mutes the TV and waits until Dan's face is back in close-up before hitting send on the text.

He glances down briefly but the flow of his amiable bullshit doesn't break for even a millisecond. Amy almost believes he was listening to whatever Matty's saying about Taylor in 1848. At the commercial break, though, her phone lights up. She answers through another mouthful of pizza.

"You breaking in to the airport to steal a plane yet?" Every trace of his cool professional persona is gone. Instead he sounds tired but pumped, like he's just back from a run or ambling home from some coed's apartment.

"Would I tell you even if I were?"

"Of course you would," he says, and he's right, she totally would, but she has a plan to follow now. "You spent like half your life working for her. I thought you'd go running back."

"I'm working. No travel for me until the Senate's back in session."

For a second he just breathes at her over the phone. Amy looks at the TV and snorts. Herpes commercial, how apropos.

When Dan speaks again, he's whispering. "You're really doing it? You're going to run him in four years?"

"I'm going to help the senator win reelection in two is what I'm going to do."

"I knew it. You're fucking running him!" Now he sounds like he did the first time they fucked: breathless with triumph and glee. Maybe even a little awed, if she feels like flattering herself.

"Off the record?"

"C'mon, Ames," he whines.

The fiery animated sore slides off the screen, pushed by a soothing blue logo. "You should get back to the desk." Over his protest, she adds, "You know, the first thing I did when I took this job was get a subscription to the _Bangor Clangor_. Lots of interesting news breaking there these days."

She hangs up right as the commercial ends. At the edge of the screen, Dan slides into view between Greg and Matty. He smiles and nods through some chitchat, looking for all the world like he's completely tuned in to the vapid rehash of the last few hours. But his hands are stacked on the desk in front of him and one shoulder moves almost imperceptibly. Amy's phone vibrates with a new message.

_You know you're giving me the story._

Dan has somehow managed to create the impression that he's three steps ahead of the game, always spinning out new trajectories for himself based on whatever opportunity is directly in front of him. Amy knows better. He forgets that although he's one of the best bullshitters she's ever seen, he's completely transparent to her. Dan, a master manipulator? No, on his best days he's just tossing out bait until he finds the one you'll bite.

There's no story to give him, not when she's planning on dragging him along for the ride.

* * * * *

Amy will spend her entire fortieth birthday freezing her tits off. From the west front of the Capitol, where a bitterly cold wind cuts through her overcoat, to her new office in the West Wing, which apparently was disconnected from the HVAC system the rest of the building enjoys. 

Still, it will be hard to complain when her birthday present is the whole country throwing a giant party celebrating the electoral victory she spent years engineering.

She will celebrate in fine style, following Tom and his somehow still-blushing new wife into the Commander-in-Chief's Ball, ducking out halfway to conference with two legislative aides with a knack for picking up gossip, then trailing the presidential party to the Inaugural Ball at the Willard, where she will pretend not to see the camera flashes while she dances. Then she will freeze her tits off on a loading dock, sucking down an incredibly ill-advised cigarette that she will smell on her fingers for the next 24 hours, and swigging directly from a bottle of champagne.

And not long after that, she will stumble out of the freight elevator onto the eleventh floor, where a suite awaits her, with a half-drunk bottle of champagne in one hand and Dan Egan's tuxedo jacket in the other.

Dan, unfortunately, will still be wearing it.

This is the part of the plan that scares Amy the most. It means she has gone as far as she can in making something of herself alone. To get over the next hill, to get herself _to_ the Hill under her own power instead of yoked to someone else's name: she needs a partner. A real one, not some slippery fuck who'll ingratiate himself to anyone anywhere as long as it benefits him. No, she needs someone who will stick around through the downturns instead of looking for the nearest exit sign. 

That's not the scary part, though. Amy has tried that before. She did the serious couple thing with Ed. Gave real consideration to walking away to be with him, to put something approaching normal ahead of her career.

But that's where she made the mistake, isn't it? Amy doesn't want normal. She never has. As a kid, she only dreamt about princes because when they became kings, they needed queens who would keep the country in order while they did stupid shit like riding off to war. This has always been an inevitability if she wants to make those childhood dreams come true. 

No, the scary part is how long she's known it had to be Dan. What's worse, though she doesn't know this yet, is how fast he will agree to be the one to stick around. 

That night, though, Amy will be well aware that even as she feels as powerful as she's ever been, she will still have to put in her time on Tom's staff. Will still need to establish residency somewhere, to rekindle that old ability to care about the little people. She will be only halfway there, this far into the future, with a long road ahead. But it will be nice not to be walking it alone.

A few hours later, Dan will sprawl across most of the pillows in the wide bed, sleepy-eyed and a little drunk still. Amy will be curled up in an armchair, attention torn between a stack of dispatches and her email. The rings on their fingers will glitter in the gray light before dawn.

"Look," he will say, "don't take this the wrong way, but I kind of can't believe this is real. I mean, you actually _did_ it. You totally pulled this off. There's no stopping us now, babe. This is amazing."

Amy will roll her eyes but she will also put down her phone and close the folder in her lap. Impressing him will never stop feeling good, given how hard he tries not to be impressed by anything. "What did you think I was doing all those years with Selina?"

"Wasting your incredibly talented time, mostly." 

His grin will be infectious and Amy will realize that she never hoped for this, even in her most pie-in-the-sky daydreams. All she wanted was to be heard. To finally feel like the power player she always pretended to be. It will be years yet before she gets to that finish line, but there, in that room, she will start to feel like she's really on her way.

"Oh, stop," Amy will say, as deadpan as she can manage with that hot glow of satisfaction finally warming her all the way through, "or you'll sweep me right off my feet."


End file.
